How Congress Is Hollowing Out the Military

The Pentagon had planned to improve readiness starting next year by closing excess facilities, retiring legacy weapons systems (such as the A-10, U-2 and KC-46 tanker) and “mothballing” some cruisers and amphibious ships. This would have allowed DoD to spread its readiness dollars among a smaller number of bases, ships and squadrons. The force would be smaller, but more ready. When budgets are tight, however, it is easier for Congress to protect things that are more visible and straightforward to quantify: buildings and runways, ships and airplanes, tanks and brigade combat teams.

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And that’s exactly what happened. So now, to pay for more compensation and acquisition, DoD will have to cut readiness funding and spread those dollars across a larger force. That means next year there will be less flying, less steaming, less training and fewer spare parts and supplies. This is what we mean by “hollowing out.”

This isn’t strategically smart, and it effectively takes Congress out of the decision-making process on how to maintain readiness. The military will be forced to cut readiness based on what is practical and expedient, rather than being able to prioritize capabilities that are most important for the world we’re in. For example, the Navy will have to pay for nuclear maintenance on its carriers and submarines and therefore be compelled to forego maintenance on destroyers that are our front-line forces in the Black Sea, Baltic and East China Sea. The Army will have to pay for the drawdown in Afghanistan, and therefore won’t be able to ramp up the training and preparation of troops that will rotationally deploy to support U.S. allies and partners in Europe and Asia.

There are innovative ways to keep equipment for later while saving money today. The Navy, for instance, proposed mothballing 12 ships and then upgrading and returning them to the fleet at a rate of one or two per year over the next decade. The result would save almost $1 billion per year in operating costs and extend the lives of the ships into the late 2030s. But the HASC wants to stall this plan by forcing DoD to wait for a General Accounting Office report due in mid-2015—too late to implement the idea until 2016 at the earliest.

HASC chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) tried to apply the “mothball” approach instead as a compromise on the A-10 tank killer aircraft. Rather than allowing the Air Force to retire its aging aircraft, he proposed putting them in long-term storage. His committee shot down the proposal and directed the Pentagon to keep them in service. In the Senate, John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and others already made clear they don’t support retiring the A-10.

Congress, when it passed sequestration in 2011, asked the Pentagon to be more strategic, efficient and innovative. That is what DoD is trying to do. If lawmakers continue to reject DoD’s efforts to reshape and reform the military, they are effectively forcing the military to be less strategic, less efficient and less innovative. Defense cuts require hard choices, but if the Senate follows the House’s lead, we could end up with a paper tiger military that looks good on the surface but isn’t prepared to respond in a security environment that becomes more uncertain every day.

Bryan Clark is senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit public policy research institute for national security strategy.

Todd Harrison is senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit public policy research institute for national security strategy.